Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

He breathed heavily. The house was quiet, but the silence was that of a sepulchre. The whole world was quiet. There was no one awake but him, and for the first time in many days his thinking was clear.

When I saw you tonight, when in a moment of truth you came to me with a profession of love, my deepest regret was that I had none to give. You said that you had none, either, but you did give me something — you affirmed what I had always known to be the greatest manifestation of love or hate — and that is the willingness to lose the physical self. More than this loss, however, is the total commitment of the mind to an end that gives no glory, no reward, no immortality .

My brother, you will be reborn, even before you meet Him who is our last arbiter. I know this, for you — not I — are the new whom we have all been seeking. I have often wondered about the shape and color of this new man, this archangel, this man whom we have sought to be the ultimate modernizer. Now I know what he looks like. He may think of himself as a machine or as a weapon, but I know that he is much, much more than this — he is a spigot of true blood and a coil of complex nerves, and although he may regard his life with some contempt, the truth is that he gives values, far more than I can adorn mine with the hypnosis of words. He is the poet, not I .

Words — these are the jewels that I must polish. I must now try to answer as truthfully as I can, at least to myself, without having to justify myself, the question of what I have done with words — of what use is poetry, of what use is art .

I will not now try to be as obscure as Ester — whom you will probably agree with — once said I was. In fact I would like to think that poetry or art is the most luminous, the most lucid, of all forms of communication, for it goes straight not to the mind but to the heart. I would be at a loss, however, to describe how the process comes about — and because the process sometimes defines the nature and uses of art, you must forgive me if I find no real explanation for the uses of art .

What I can tell you is what it is against. It is opposed to the debasement of the human spirit. It is against anything that brutalizes, primarily because it is an affirmation of life — and anything that brutalizes denies life. How simple it would be for me to say now that art is life — not death — and that art, with all its inanities, its obscurity and its lack of purpose is, perhaps, like you, the ultimate conqueror of death .

This, I think, is what I have tried to do — to create, for myself at least, something that could make me more than what I am, coward and weakling, a man who has forsaken his past and his loved ones, a man who has lived on hate as I know my kind of hate and yet must learn how to live, if only to assure himself that he is an artist .

I think that I am, as usual, flattering myself again, thinking of myself as a creator, equipped with the finest sensibilities, and therefore special. How I would like to call myself a new man — but I know that I am not and that by your light I will never be really committed to life in such a way that I can vanquish death in the manner in which you have flung yourself completely toward its defeat. It is you then, my fearsome executioner, who is the artist, the rebel and creator, for it is you who will make beauty out of the ugliness that pervades our lives, out of the dung heap that surrounds us .

As for me, there is no single shred of doubt in my mind as to the future that I face, a future that I will have no hand in shaping in the way that you have. My mundane task is to survive — and to survive I must stay away from the turmoil of conflict and the putrefaction of despair. My sight is limited. I look around me and see the vastness of a landscape that has been charred into ruins. I see nothing but the rubble of dreams, and I am puny and weak, and I cannot do anything but quiet this helpless rage and remember that I no longer belong .

In spite of this I will try to live with my concept of honor, to accept the limits of what I can endure. If I am driven forward, inch by inch toward the grave, it is by compulsion and it is only with death that the tyrant within can be vanquished .

God, I am afraid. I would like to think that I can be brave as in the harsh physical sense I was once brave. I have seen death and laughed at its ugly face, but I have not really conquered him, for in the end he will triumph and he knows it .

But my death has happened and it has been swift and even sweet, for it has been administered with grace, with love — not hate. Good-bye, my brother .

The loud metallic clatter of vehicles and the shouts that rocketed up to the house from the school yard where the soldiers were camped woke Luis up from a dreamless sleep and made him aware that something important was happening. Somehow, Vic’s nocturnal visit seemed unreal, but the letter, which he had written in longhand, staring at him from his writing table, brought him back to the reality of Rosales, to Vic’s admonition that they must now leave. The air was ominous, and although the morning was bright and the day was alive, a sense of foreboding knotted his chest. He went to the room where his wife was. She was already awake, and the nurse was giving her breakfast — tomato juice, eggs, rice, and a thick slice of ham. Every night she was given sleeping pills, so that she never woke up until morning and had not had one listless night since her return from the hospital.

“You slept well?” she asked, her eyes shining. He nodded absentmindedly and took a sip from her coffee. He sat beside her at the small table, and his hand went up slowly from her flanks to her breast. She nudged at him, implying discretion, for the nurse was in the room, although her back was turned to them.

“You can sleep with me tonight, Luis, if you wish. It gets cold, and I need you to keep me warm. I am better now and won’t need any more injections.”

“Except one,” he whispered in her ear; she quickly pinched him as she whispered back, “Not for another two weeks. Do you want me to go back to the hospital?”

The nurse left them discreetly, and as soon as she was gone Luis said, “The soldiers are leaving. They are taking everything with them, even the tin tubs where they store the mush. I don’t think they’re coming back.”

They walked to the window. In the rain-washed morning the soldiers were loading their bedding and tents into the six-by-sixes lined up in front of the schoolhouse. The trucks were already bursting with equipment, but the loading seemed but half finished. Two officers in sweat-drenched khaki were shouting orders at the men in battle greens, weighed down with bandoliers and ammunition cases, which they balanced on their heads. People were gathered around the trucks. Food vendors were cornering some of the soldiers poring over lists and arguing about debts.

The first two trucks were filled with nondescript crates, and the families of the soldiers — mothers suckling babies, kids too young to understand what was going on — moved to the rear, and a jeep and an armored car with its mounted fifty-caliber machine gun advanced to take their place. Some of the shacks beyond the schoolhouse, which the soldiers’ families had occupied, were torn down and all salvageable materials — tin sheets and wooden sidings — had been loaded into the vehicles.

They are leaving us , Luis mused darkly, and I will never know who among them destroyed Sipnget .

He turned away from the window. “Why do you think they’re leaving?” Trining asked, tugging at his hand.